We’re excited to announce that we’ve taken a significant step toward achieving our goal of becoming verified carbon neutral in 2025. Conducting a comprehensive carbon audit for our business was a challenging yet essential endeavour in this journey.

The word ‘verified’ is easy to say, yet it’s where the hard work really starts! We’re investing time and resources in doing things properly, as is the Systematic way. We want the claims that we make to have the highest integrity and stand up to independent scrutiny. We’ve joined forces with carbon partner Auditel who will guide us as we measure, manage and report our carbon emissions with the goal of an industry recognised standard of carbon neutrality.

Not as easy as 1, 2, 3

We’re talking about scopes of emissions. We’ve been measuring some of these for 15 years, yet we can now say that we’re calculating and capturing our direct and indirect Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, Scopes 1, 2 and 3, in a Carbon Footprint Report that follows GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard methodology.

It is typically within Scope 3 that over 80% of most business emissions are located. Scope 3 encompasses emissions that are not produced by a company itself or its assets, it’s about those that the business is indirectly responsible for, up and down its value chain. Within Scope 3 you have emissions that include employee commuting, business travel, transport and distribution, purchased goods and services.

We welcome your scrutiny. It’s encouraging to see that our client’s procurement teams are beginning to ask questions about our emissions by scope. Whilst it is challenging to understand ‘what good looks like’ for different sectors and scales of business, this is a start. If this questioning prompts more businesses to seek to understand new benchmarks on good business, change will be for the better of our planet. Accountability is everything.

Tread lightly and carefully

Not all carbon footprints or reports are the same. Carbon accounting methods and levels of rigour vary hugely! An array of accreditations has evolved over recent years, ranging from simple online forms to the involved B Corp Certification; a high profile accreditation, yet one that is more concerned with the wider 18 UN Sustainability criteria and does not attempt a carbon footprint at all.

Our approach is built on GHG standards which must include the internationally recognised emissions factor usage, protocols for reporting and include all Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions and importantly, a minimum of nine of the 15 Scope 3 emissions. Only footprints and reporting with this methodology can be externally verified by a UKAS registered company like NQA, Bureau Veritas or the BSI.

Embracing the journey

We’re committed to managing, measuring and report our carbon footprint with the longer-term objective of reaching Net Zero. It is vital for us to demonstrate as a business, that we are looking to the future, and we are taking the climate emergency seriously.

It was 2009 when our approach became accredited to environmental management standard 14001, an accreditation and focus that we maintain today. Yet we know that there needs to be an even greater emphasis on sustainable business, and we want to do the right thing.

Our work is not just about the destination, verified carbon neutral status. On our journey, we’re instigating process and behavioural changes, it’s not about only sweeping procurement changes and big capital investments. We’ve already reached a few milestones, some of which are summarised below. We’ll happily share insights on how we’ve got there, if that supports your own journey.

Now armed with detailed statistics from the audit, we’re moving forward with a roadmap of projects.

• A key theme for the year ahead is transportation. Whilst our fleet is now fully electric, we are seeking to better understand the modes and distances travelled by goods associated with orders that we place. We are improving the level of data that we capture and gathering more information from our suppliers around their transportation strategy.
• Our use of electricity is another area of focus. We have recently eliminated our need for mains gas which is big achievement. We now have more of a reliance on the electricity we generate, which we charge our fleet with too. We are closely monitoring data associated with what we generate, consume and export back to the grid, so we can optimise our electricity usage.

As we take the next steps, our carbon improvements will be measured year on year by Auditel. We’ll keep you posted and in the interim, please get in touch if you would like a copy of our Environmental Statement.